Widowed Mother Research Articles

Inner Workings of the Novel: Studying a Genre (review)

Reviewed by: Inner Workings of the Novel: Studying a Genre Laurence M. Porter Pasco, Allan H. Inner Workings of the Novel: Studying a Genre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Pp. xii+209. ISBN: 978-0-230-10698-7 I confess that I asked to review Allan Pasco's new book sight unseen, with the intention of praising a distinguished scholar for his continuing contributions to narratology. I would have liked him to have written a different book than he did. This attitude is neither fair nor appropriate in a reviewer, who should simply go try to write that ideal book himself. I hope, then, that our disagreements can be understood not as evaluations of Allan Pasco's book per se but as testimonials to the provocative power of his analyses. Allan Pasco defines the novel as "long prose fiction that is unified, coherent, and literary" (ix; emphasis in original). He does not seek its unity and coherence in emplotment, characterization, depictions of society, or message. He finds unity in constellations of symbols, and in "sequences" (a term never defined) that may crystallize into a reader's awareness by the end of a narrative. Pasco uses "theme" to designate the coherence produced within a narrative by recurring situations, motifs, topics, images, or symbols. His proof texts are Camus's L'Exil et le royaume; Barbey d'Aurevilly's Les Diaboliques; Flaubert's Tentation de saint Antoine; Huysmans' À rebours; and Proust. The major differences between our outlooks concern the use to Camus's and Barbey's short story cycles to illuminate the novel; what I see as the lack of adequate contextualization for all the works; a need for a richer sense of character and of interpersonal relations in the three novels; and a fuller treatment of "theme" in its ethical rather than esthetic sense. By "ethical" here I mean a work's "message," the reason why we should care about the story we are reading. Such messages hold up standards for judging human behavior. They may be axiological (concerning relative values), deontological (moral values), epistemological (how much is knowable), or anagogical (spiritual progress—see Dante's letter to Cangrande della Scala). The Kunstlerroman such as Proust's reflects a secularized version of the anagogical. Where Allan Pasco tries consistently to minimize the importance of character and plot, I try consistently to enhance it. To do so, I consistently emphasize implicatures. Admitting that one person's implicature is another person's psychic projection, or void—never proof positive—we can quickly see the difference between our views in what Pasco says (in passing) about La Princesse de Clèves. "Of Mlle de Chartres . . . we are told only that she is a great beauty and that she has very white skin and blond hair. From that point on, her actions and the stories told to her are hung from little but her name, to which readers of good will attach significant traits [through psychic projection] as they follow her adventures" (4). True, Madame de Lafayette's physical description is perfunctory. But it sets up the major conflict of the work. In the late seventeenth century French court, where the discrepancy between the public and the private self was all-important (see La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère), the typical problem of physically beautiful people is aggravated: they tend to be seen only as desirable objects. The fascination they exercise is also their curse. Prior to this description, moreover, we readers have already been told that the future Princesse is an only child, [End Page 160] dominated by her ambitious, widowed mother, who pushes her into an arranged marriage (compare George Sand's Indiana). The tragedy of her life flows from that family dynamic. Moreover, thought report, which occurs throughout the narrative, provides rich, unequivocal information about her character. So does her unconventional decision to confess to her husband her attraction to another man, as a way of resisting it. (Unconscious vengeful cruelty? We have no way of knowing.) She undergoes deep, agonizing spiritual struggles. The open-ended conclusion avoids pat moralizing, leaving us to do much interpretative work ourselves. What are we to make of the memories of "inimitable" examples of virtue that...

Brown-Séquard

Brown-Séquard

Johnny Swanson (review)

Reviewed by: Johnny Swanson Elizabeth Bush Updale, Eleanor . Johnny Swanson. Fickling/Random House, 2011. [384p]. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-385-75199-5 $19.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-385-75198-8 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-375-89688-0 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 5-8. Johnny Swanson, the smallest kid in his class, secretly spends three shillings that he and his widowed mother can't spare in response to an ad that promises the "Secret of Instant Height." The answer by return post, "Stand on a box," doesn't increase his stature, but it does inspire him with a host of ideas for scams of his own, which he promptly launches to help keep the landlord at bay when the rent comes due. Johnny digs himself ever deeper in lies to keep his enterprise going in a small 1929 village where everyone knows everybody's business, and soon he's concocted a cover story of an ailing aunt on a visit who has a modest mail-order needlework trade of her own. Johnny's petty swindle pales, though, beside a truly heinous crime in the neighborhood: Dr. Langford, known for his good works at a tuberculosis sanitarium, is found slain in his home; his wife is missing; and Johnny's mother, who cleans house for them, is arrested as the killer. Johnny strongly suspects that the murder may be related to Langford's covert work on a TB vaccine used by the French but banned in Britain, and as the boy investigates to save his mother, his own life is on the line. There's flair and entertainment here for sure, but the two crime themes don't always mesh as smoothly as one might like, lurching in tone from comic mischief to mortal peril, and wrapping up on a note of new dad/new stepsister/ happy ever after. While this may be a far cry, stylistically, from the sure-handed panache of Updale's Montmorency series (Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman, BCCB 4/04, et al.), younger readers who prefer their mysteries diluted with a dash of humor may still feel they're getting their money's worth. [End Page 349] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Theresa and Blake: Mobility and Resistance in Antebellum African American Serialized Fiction

“How do you solve a problem like Theresa?” asks Frances Smith Foster in the Winter 2006 issue of the African American Review. Speaking specifically of “Theresa—A Haytien Tale” (1828), published serially in four installments of Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm’s Freedom’s Journal, Foster notes how it challenges our notions of black literary history. It predates by several decades what were assumed to be the first works of fiction by African Americans (e.g., “The Heroic Slave” by Frederick Douglass in 1852, and William Wells Brown’s Clotel, published in England in 1853). It is not a slave narrative. It is not even set in the United States. And it focuses on the trials and tribulations of three women—a widowed mother and her two daughters—rather than men. Indeed, Foster proclaims, the discovery of this story demonstrates that “neither fiction as a genre, Haiti as a topic, nor (black) women as heroic protagonists were unfamiliar to the readers of Freedom’s Journal” (“Forgotten” 637). More importantly, she writes, its dissimilarity to recognized forms of nineteenth-century African American writing, in particular the slave narrative—which William L. Andrews describes as “the dominant mode of black antebellum narrative” (“Novelization” 23)—indicates “the need for a more complete and accurate corpus, canon, or reconstruction of literary history” (“Forgotten” 633). “Theresa,” however, is not completely anomalous. In fact, it bears many similarities to another work that also departs from the conventions of “African American Literature”: Martin R. Delany’s Blake: Or, the Huts of America, twenty-six chapters of which were serialized in the Anglo-African Magazine in 1859, and serialized in its entirety in the Weekly Anglo-African from November 1861 to May 1862. Both works take the West Indies as their setting, black revolution as their subject, and test the boundaries of believable storytelling. What is most striking about the two works, however, especially in contrast to the slave narrative, is the mobility of the characters as well as the exotic settings they occupy. Theresa, her sisters, and her mother, Madame Paulina, travel across Haiti, unattended and unmolested, while Delany’s Henry Blake foments slave insurrections throughout the American South as well as Cuba. In this, the two works reflected the periodicals in which they appeared. Although Freedom’s Journal, the Anglo-African Magazine, and the Weekly Anglo-African were all published in New York City, they provided readers with a wide range of content. They did not simply cover the day’s (or week’s) events, but also included essays, poetry, anecdotes, and fiction that exposed readers to people, places, and ideas from around the world. Ultimately, when seen in light of their publication in African American periodicals, “Theresa—A Haytien Tale” and Blake demonstrate the extent to which

Geographic Dispersion and the Well-Being of the Elderly

Perhaps the largest problem confronting our aging population is the rising cost of health care, particularly the costs borne by Medicare and Medicaid. A chief component of this expense is long-term care. Much of this care for an unmarried (mostly widowed) mother is currently provided by adult children. The provision of family care depends importantly on the geographic dispersion of family members. In this study we provide preliminary evidence on the geographic dispersion of adult children and their older unmarried mother. Coresidence is less likely for married adult children, those who are parents and the highly educated and more likely for those who are not working or only employed part time and for black and Hispanic adult children. Close proximity is more common for married children who are parents but less common for the highly educated. When we look at transitions between one wave of data collection and the next (a 2-year interval), about half of adult children live more than 10 miles away at both points, a little less than one quarter live within 10 miles at both points, and 8 percent are coresident at both points in time. Among the 17 percent who make a transition, about half of the changes result in greater distance between the adult child and mother and half bring them into closer proximity. The needs of both generations are likely reflected in these transitions. In fact, a mother’s health is not strongly related to most transitions and if anything, distance tends to be greater for older mothers relative to those mothers in their early 50s.

Tusk

Tusk

Uganda at risk of reversing HIV/AIDS progress

All Rachel Alum could think about was dying. Nightmares disrupted her sleep in a church in northern Uganda, where the widowed mother of four was camped out with her children. She was weak, covered in skin rashes and dehydrated from vomiting and diarrhea. She was HIV-positive, and her immune system

Service Use for Mental Disorders and Unmet Need: Results From the Israel Survey on Mental Health Among Adolescents

Service Use for Mental Disorders and Unmet Need: Results From the Israel Survey on Mental Health Among Adolescents

Service Use for Mental Disorders and Unmet Need: Results From the Israel Survey on Mental Health Among Adolescents

The first nationwide Israel Survey of Mental Health Among Adolescents was conducted in 2004-2005 with a representative sample of 957 adolescents aged 14-17 and their mothers to assess 12-month mental health service use, unmet needs, and associated factors. Need for services was assessed by presence of a psychiatric disorder diagnosed with the Development and Well-Being Assessment inventory, plus clinicians' verification and additional questions on service use. In the past year, 22% of adolescents and 11% of their mothers consulted a service provider. Adolescents' help seeking in school was associated with residing in an Arab locality (odds ratio [OR]=1.6, 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.1-2.4) and with having single, divorced, or widowed parents (OR=2.9, CI=1.8-4.8); an employed father (OR=1.7, CI=1.0-2.8); and an internalizing disorder (OR=2.2, CI=1.2-3.9). Mothers' consultation was associated with residing in a Jewish or mixed locality (OR=18.1, CI=3.4-96.1); being single, divorced, or widowed (OR=3.1, CI=1.6-6.0); and having a child with an internalizing disorder (OR=6.4, CI=3.2-13.0), an externalizing disorder (OR=8.2, CI=2.9-23.0), or a learning disability (OR=4.5, CI=2.4-8.4). Overall, unmet needs were 66% and 60%, according to adolescents' and mothers' reports, respectively. According to mothers' reports, unmet needs were higher in Arab (91%) than in Jewish or mixed localities (54%). Adolescents and their mothers reported distinct service use patterns with particular implications for policy makers and health service providers. High rates of unmet needs, particularly among Arab-Israeli adolescents, need to be addressed.

When In Loco Parentis Gets a Little Crazy

When In Loco Parentis Gets a Little Crazy

Three Korean Graphic Novelists Reimagine the Genre

Three Korean Graphic Novelists Reimagine the Genre

Figuring Gender in the Picaresque Novel: From Lazarillo to Zayas

The picaresque genre's narrations of the misadventures of rogues have tended to privilege the masculine gender of its protagonists, and the male-centered plot of these canonical novels is further evinced not only in the maternal abandonment suffered by the young boy and his contact with a series of amoral father figures, but through the mature picaro's failed amorous relations with women. While most critical studies have diminished the significance of women's roles in these novels, aptly calling her la gran desconocida [the great unknown], Julia Martinez-Gonzalez points out that the picaro's mother in particular has received little attention. Yet, while the female figures are often overlooked by critics and repressed by the male protagonists, they assume a key part in the novels and their function takes on overt significance in those whose protagonists are picaras. Indeed, a major issue addressed by both the female and male picaresque is the representation of gender difference, since the genre, due both to the homosocial economy of its canonical male exemplars (Davis, Breaking 138) and to the numerous novels with female protagonists, illustrates the many theories that circulated regarding the behavior and treatment of women in the literary and moral discourses of the early modern period. Thus, no matter how devalued, the feminine element refuses to disappear from this new genre. Lazarillo de Tormes sets up one of the genre's main characteristics by drawing attention to the child's degraded family origins: born to a thief and a prostitute, Lazarillo attempts to cover up his parents' behavior by ironically portraying them in the best possible light. The father's death is ambiguously ascribed either to his service in the war against the Turks at Djerba or to his desertion of his post as muleteer, a job traditionally assigned to moriscos, who often sided with the enemy. His widowed mother takes up with Zaide, a Moor who feeds the starving family by stealing from his employer. By handing over the young boy to the blind man, she launches Lazarillo on his picaresque career, Hijo, ya se que no te vere mas. Procura de ser bueno y Dios te guie. Criado te he y con buen amo te he puesto; valete por ti (25). Her illicit relations with the heretic Moor, a thief like her previous partner, further corroborate her debased nature, significantly prefiguring all women's dissoluteness. The mother's negative portrait, in fact, is mirrored in the novel's last tratado in the image of the Archpriest's servant and lover, whom Lazaro takes as his wife, as the picaro's desecrated marriage to the adulterous servant ensures the novel's circular structure by linking her with his own prostitute mother. Lazaro's faithless wife substitutes metonymically for Lazarillo's absent mother, since the adult picaro receives from the former the food and shelter that as a child he had been denied by the latter. (1) It is well to remember, however, that his wife had previously abandoned three children (133). By conflating the wife's sexuality with her desertion of her progeny, the narrative retraces the mother's behavior: both women assume the dual roles of prostitute and unnatural mother. Because the wife's continuing service at the Archpriest's house ensures the picaro's welfare, when he is interpellated by Vuestra Merced, Lazaro shields her false honor by swearing on the holy host that she is virtuous (134). Yet Vuestra Merced's interrogation--the letter on which Lazarillo's case is famously centered--is meant to uncover the truth about the ongoing sexual liaison between his wife and the churchman. The shadowy inquisitor is scarcely interested in a humble town crier's cuckoldry. To the degree that Vuestra Merced wishes to investigate the cover-up the marriage provides for the Archpriest's illicit sexual transgressions, Lazaro's purported innocence will nonetheless be seriously questioned by him. The wife's misconduct, as well as Lazaro's corrupt complaisance, threatens to return the picaro to his original status by replicating the mother's early abandonment. …

Uniform Indians: Personal Reflections on the Eastern Band Cherokee Boarding School Experience

Uniform Indians: Personal Reflections on the Eastern Band Cherokee Boarding School Experience Sarah Margaret Sneed (bio) My sister and I grew up away from our people, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, but our bedtime stories were most often about my mother’s days as a student at the Cherokee Boarding School. The stories were retold often and furnished us a bond to our tribe that was sustained during the time our family lived out west. Our mom, born Mary Smith, told about how one day around 1920, while picking blackberries, she and her sister, Rosie, were scooped up by John Crowe, a tribal lawman and truant officer, placed into the back of a wagon with other children and taken to the Cherokee Boarding School. Her widowed mother, Lucy Ann, had not given consent, nor was she notified, that her daughters had been taken to school. Mom never mentioned her oldest sister, Annie, when she told this story. Indeed, Annie may well have been away working as a servant in a white family’s home, as part of the boarding school program known as “Outing,” in which students were placed for employment. Mom said that, once at school, she had been immediately abandoned by Rosie, who, having started school two years earlier, had fallen in easily with her classmates. One of the first meals Mom was served at school was macaroni. She had never seen the likes of this strange food, but having had some experience with intestinal parasites, thought she was being asked to eat a plate of worms. Her rejection of the food was met with a knuckle rapping by a fierce, yonega-ageya dormitory matron. Mom was five years old and couldn’t understand why Lucy Ann didn’t come to take her and Rosie home, away from this terrifying environment. An account that caused me great distress was of how Mom had been told only after the fact that her mother had come to the school to see if her daughters were there. Mom would not see her mother until later that year at a Christmas program to which families were invited. Having been raised on stories of Mom’s attendance at the Cherokee Boarding School and later at Chilocco Indian Agricultural School in [End Page 49] Kansas, I was especially honored to be selected to document the boarding school experiences of our people under a project Principal Chief Michell Hicks initiated through the Kituwah Preservation Education Program of the Eastern Band. Aside from the obvious negative impacts boarding school education effected, Chief Hicks has observed that forced removal in youth from families and from the Qualla Boundary may well have fostered values deeply held among Eastern Band elders, including the closeness they feel toward others of their generation and their devotion to the Eastern Band’s lands. In 2005, Chief Hicks initiated the publication of an Elders’ Yearbook, an album of photographs of and quotations from Eastern Band senior citizens, regarding memories from their youth, including a section regarding life at boarding school. This effort was subsequently expanded to include the development of a permanent compilation of materials regarding the Eastern Band boarding school experience. Photographs and videotaped interviews compiled through this project were mounted, and received very positive acclaim at the 2008 Tribal Fair in Cherokee. Interviews conducted with elders eighty years of age and older reflected the official strategies of Indian boarding school education of the day. Some shared experiences of harsh treatment by dorm matrons and teachers and most acknowledged that their experiences when first placed at the Cherokee Boarding School were frightening and confusing. But the interviews deviated in one dominant respect from the literature regarding boarding school experiences elsewhere. Eastern Band members in this age group expressed, and in a number of cases insisted that it be emphasized, that their bad experiences at the Cherokee Boarding School were balanced by positive outcomes, good things had come to them as a result of their education at the Cherokee Boarding School. Those elders seem to have genuinely taken an educational regime designed to break their tribal identities and reformed the school environment as their own. Their spirit in so doing is all...

Dollar General Corporation (a) Abridged

Condensed version of UVA-BP-0253 Excerpt UVA-BP-0388 DOLLAR GENERAL CORPORATION (A) ABRIDGED In February 1984, Cal Turner, Jr., 44‑year‑old president of Dollar General Corporation, was finally looking forward to returning to business as usual after the hectic pace of the past few months. The company had been understaffed even before the 1983 acquisition of 280 Hirsch stores from Interco, Inc. Now, just as the conversion of these stores to DG stores was on schedule, Interco was offering to sell DG another chain. Company Background Dollar General's roots stretched back to when J.L. Turner, Cal Jr.'s grandfather, quit school at age 11 to help support his widowed mother and three younger siblings living on a small, mortgaged farm. In his mid‑20s, J.L. went to work for a grocery and dry‑goods wholesaler. As J.L. traveled the small towns of Tennessee and Kentucky during a time “when everybody's belly was flat up against their backbone,” a fellow merchant suggested to him that the depression was forcing near-bankrupt retailers to sell their inventories for next to nothing. So J.L. began taking out short-term bank loans of $ 2,000 or $ 3,000 and buying complete inventories from hard-up merchants. He would sell the merchandise as quickly as possible and repay the bank, usually within 30 days. Financing was easy because depression-era banks were starved for good loans. J.L.'s son, Cal Turner (Sr.) was equally suited for retailing. A February 2, 1968, article in The Louisville Courier-Journal noted that, before he had graduated from Scottsville High School, Cal Sr. was already a storekeeper: . . .

Gwendolyn Brooks, Black Poetry, and Me

As a graduate student at City College in 1970,1 encountered an academic and cultural ambience distinct from the largely multicultural one we know today. My beloved mother had died in 1969, radically altering my world. I was reentering my youthful domain of poetry and poetry readings, thanks to an old college friend, Paul Blackburn, while I was resuming my studies after a hiatus of twenty years. Someone told me that a person of my ethnic heritage?Arab American, an unfamiliar category at the time, in my case Lebanese with Greek ancestry?was in town, a poet named Etel Adnan. I attended her reading at St. Mark's Church and greatly enjoyed her experimental work. But there was no one else on the scene I could discuss her with as a fellow ethnic. Blackburn, on the other hand, became my mentor. He was a follower of Charles Olson, whose poetics became the subject of my master's thesis. He introduced me to the poets he had scheduled for two reading series at Max's Kansas City and at Dr. Generosity, both bistros long gone into history. Blackburn's tastes were sure and eclectic. He appreciated Black poets. They were the ones, moreover?like Jayne Cortez and Sonia Sanchez?to whom I related. Why? There were several reasons. I was especially drawn to their musicality and to their politics, to the vitality of their work, charged with the personae and issues of an Earth we were currently inhabiting and despoiling. I invited Sonia Sanchez to read with me at City College; I was thrilled that she accepted. Discovering the jazz-infused work of Jayne Cortez inspired me to write a poem about her drum poem. The affinities were deep. As a child, I listened to my father reciting classical Arabic poetry, which sounded profoundly musical. My mother, who had been educated by French nuns, taught me French and had me memorize French poems, which also had a strong lyrical component. She often sang me to sleep?usually in French. Both my par ents spoke English; my mother and her sisters also knew Greek. My grandmother, who had been raised in a Prussian orphanage, additionally spoke German. As an adolescent, I loved Frost, Whitman, Whittier, and Dickinson, along with the English romantic poets, especially Percy Bysshe Shelley. I admired the rhythms and onomatopoeia in their work before understanding sonority structures in a more sophisticated way. Later on I was swept into the vitality of their radical ideas and political concerns. My own work was musical and political. I wanted to communicate with my fellow humans about our lives and how we might live in harmony. My mother's family?her widowed mother, three brothers, and four sisters?were musical. Aunt Rose and Aunt Jerry sang; Uncle Al was featured in Brooklyn's Prospect Park as a one-man band. At home I was raised on intellectual and social values. We

Thomas Jefferson Forgetting the Ladies

Thomas Jefferson Forgetting the Ladies Martha Saxton (bio) Jon Kukla . Mr. Jefferson's Women. New York: Knopf, 2007. 279 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $26.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). Thomas Jefferson's racism, his slave holding, his exploitation of Sally Hemings still give us pain. Renewing the ache of those familiar wounds is Gary Nash and Graham Russell Gao Hodges' recent revelation that Jefferson welched on a promise he made to the Polish patriot, Tadeusz Kosciuszko to free his slaves although Kosciuszko set aside considerable money to reimburse Jefferson for their "value."1 And Jon Kukla's Mr. Jefferson's Women, a narrative and critique of the founding father's relationships with some of the important women in his life, makes us wish yet again that he had behaved better. Do we ask too much of him? Is the fault in the questions we pose, or his violation of the ideals he articulated so unforgettably? The questions historians pose of the author of the Declaration of Independence naturally come from a desire to understand Jefferson and his time but they almost inevitably come as well from our anguish as citizens over the defects in the democracy whose birth Jefferson attended. These overlapping and over-determined purposes transmit a sense of urgency and drama to work on Jefferson, but also mean that much rides on his weaknesses. Kukla, noticing the inadequacy of the personal and presentist responses of historians to the initial confirmation of Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemings, set about to provide a historicized view of the founder's relationships with women. The result is a telling collection of Jefferson's encounters with a number of women. (As Kukla's title hints, this book is about Mr. Jefferson, not his women. His portraits of Rebecca Burwell, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, Maria Cosway, Sally Hemings, and others are sensitive to the sexism of Jefferson and the period, but the sketches are in service of Kukla's investigation of Jefferson and not to give us new views of these women.) Jon Kukla demonstrates that Jefferson was a selfish suitor, father, and husband in private and was cold to progressive dreams about the possibilities for women in political life. Kukla's tight focus on women and gender provides a story that is readable and thought provoking about Jefferson's relations with women as well as with men. He misses some opportunities to provide the context to broaden [End Page 507] our understanding of white women's experience in the southern family and of enlightenment thinking about women and the family, which would serve to temper our disappointment with Jefferson. He also fails to follow some trails that might reach deeper into the personal Jefferson, potentially revealing even more about the political Jefferson. But this work helps us grasp something important about the elusive Jefferson. Kukla begins his story with Jefferson's youthful infatuation with Rebecca Burwell. Burwell turned down this anxious young man's halting offer of marriage and chose for a husband the more ardent and direct Jacquelin Ambler. Jefferson already battered by fear, self-consciousness, and ambivalence acquired, in the wake of Burwell's turndown, crippling headaches that would, for many years to come, afflict him in times of stress. Kukla marks Burwell's rejection as an important turning point in Jefferson's life and behavior, arguing that it "fuelled the misogyny of Jefferson's twenties and aroused a more predatory attitude toward women that ended in a series of unwelcome advances toward a married neighbor" (p. 17). Unresolved in this tale of initiation is the question of the origins of Jefferson's unhappiness. Kenneth Lockridge and Douglas Wilson who have studied Jefferson's Literary Commonplace book, a collection of excerpts from writers that includes an early period of virulent woman-hating quotations, both date the young Jefferson's deepest period of misogyny to the years before 1762, two years before Rebecca Burwell rejected him. Lockridge argues that the period corresponds roughly to the years between the death of his father and Jefferson's attaining his majority. And he concludes, as others have, that Jefferson's antagonist in these pages must be his widowed mother.2 Kukla doesn't...

Escape from Paradox: Perceval’s Upbringing in the Conte du Graal

Perceval's mother's withdrawal from the community and her flawed education of her son suggest a spiritual crisis and doubt about God's presence in human life. (ES) In the seclusion of the Waste Forest, a widowed mother raises her youngest son outside of the life of the Church. This woman, Perceval's mother, seeks safety away from Arthurian society, where she experienced injustice and violence. But after fleeing to the Welsh woods, she ceases to attend Mass, receive communion, or teach her son the truths of faith. She no longer sees herself as part of the Christian community. Told in around 500 verses in the expansive romance of the Conte du Graal, this story narrates Perceval's upbringing without community or religious practice.1 For medieval Christians, the link between liturgy and life was so close that the woman's withdrawal from the Church has to be understood as signifying a profound crisis. It denotes a loss of faith in traditional knowledge and religious life. In abstaining from the sacraments and refusing communion with God and the Church, the mother separates herself and her son from the most important source of grace and hope for salvation. Although her escape is motivated by fear for the safety of her family, it involves a spiritually inept choice of human over divine protection. Her decision never to return to society also indicates doubt about the good of humanity and the possibility of reconciliation with others. Here I explore the spiritual experience of this character to demonstrate that a deep uncertainty about God's presence in the world underlies her solitary life in the Waste Forest. Her anxiety centers on a principal act of traditional Christian belief: the sacramental union of the human with God. This concern about the union of humans and God, and of sign and thing, is intimately relevant to twelfth-century thought.2 It shaped much of the intellectual activity of the period that gave rise to Christian rationalism.3 In the background of Perceval's childhood in the Waste Forest we can recognize the devotional and semiotic crisis of the twelfth century that led to the breakdown of the patristic tradition. This crisis involved a loss of the old view of humans as participating in the life of God. Expressed in an elision of paradox, it deeply affected literature by transforming radically the conception of language and meaning. At this time of intense anxiety about knowledge of the divine, the Conte du Graal ultimately recalls the traditional belief in our ability to relate to God through the sacraments and to understand truth through symbols. The stirring tale of misfortunes suffered by Perceval's family opens the Conte du Graal. It compels us to consider carefully the events that constitute the narrative. The romance chronicles this tragedy with attention to social reality not seen in Chretien's earlier works.4 But it is unfair to conclude from this prominence of history, as does Brigitte Cazelles, that Chretien's art is antisymbolic.5 Critics of the Conte have largely assumed an inherent opposition between Christian and historical meanings. I suggest that the personal story of Perceval's family neither contradicts nor competes with Christian meanings, but instead transmits and mediates them. The language of the romance presumes no dichotomy between the letter and the symbol.6 The merging of romance and religious narratives in the Conte du Graal can be accounted for by reading the story symbolically. The fate of Perceval's kin reveals the dire condition of Arthurian society after the death of Utherpendragon, but it also manifests and interprets a timeless problem: the human struggle with mortality. Perceval's parents were exposed to a particularly devastating gust of violence. Their tragedy began when the father was wounded parmi les jambes (436) [through/between his legs] and mehaigna del cors (437) [became infi rm/ impotent]. The mother, who relates this story to her son after many years, does not explain exactly why or how this happened, but the man's great fortune was lost as a result of his injury. …

Why Urbano and María Trinidad Can't Get Married: Social Relations in Late Colonial San Antonio

Pragmática-sanción a consulta del Consejo, en que S.M. establece to conveniente, para que los hijos defamilia con arreglo à las leyes del Reyno pidan el consejo, y consentimiento paterno, antes de celebrar esponsales . . . (Madrid: Imprenta de Pedro Marín, 1776). Courtesy ofthe Biblioteca Nacional deEspaña, Madrid. Why Urbano and Mana Trinidad Can 't Get Married: Social Relations in Late Colonial San Antonio Jesús F. de la Teja* Our case study begins on the evening ofJune 3, 1781, when troopers José Miguel and Francisco Sales Games and Pedro Hernández (acting on behalf of his brother Carlos) presented themselves before Texas governor Domingo Cabello. The Sales Games brothers were the paternal uncles and the Hernandezes were the stepbrothers of Ana Maria de la Trinidad Games, the first banns for whom had been pronounced at Sunday Mass in the parish church earlier that day. The soldiers informed the governor that the proclamation of banns for Urbano Hinojosa and their niece and stepsister was an affront to their honor, as Urbano was an Indian of unknown parentage from Mission San Antonio de Valero. They complained to the governor that the day before they had attempted to talk Maria Trinidad's widowed mother, Gertrudis Pérez, out of agreeing to the marriage as it was dishonorable , and that she had agreed to bring the matter to a close. Now, discovering that she had disregarded their will, they sought relief from Cabello. They asserted that Pérez was a woman of poorjudgment and a spendthrift who had been manipulated by FrayJosé María Salas, the missionary at Mission Valero, who made a deal with her so she would consent to her underage daughter's marriage. Citing the Pragmática Sanción of 1776 (see frontis) regulating the marriage of minors, they requested that the governor prevent the wedding. Governor Cabello, in view that the men were soldiers in the presidio company of Béxar, granted them relief, advised parish priest Father Pedro Fuentes of his decision , and deposited Maria Trinidad in the home of DonJosé de la Santa, *Jesús F. de la Teja is professor and chair of the Department of History at Texas State University and State Historian. He has been book review editor of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly since 1997 and served as managing editor of Catholic Southwest: Afoumal ofHistory and Culture between 1990 and 2005. He wishes to thank his wife Maggie for her careful reading and comments on the manuscript in various forms, and the staff of the TSHA for their graciousness under fire during his year as president, 2007-2008. Vol. CXII, no. 2 Southwestern Historical Quarterly October 2008 122Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober a "man of known good repute," where she might be properly taught Christian doctrine.1 On August 27, Urbano, having waited for a proper resolution of the matter, presented his side of the case, not to the governor but to Father Fuentes. Urbano still wished to contract matrimony with Maria Trinidad, whom he described as a mulata. According to him, Father Fuentes had received all the necessary information in the course of the required prénuptial investigation and found nothing to prevent the marriage. Urbano claimed that die girl's uncles and stepbrothers had no standing to invoke the Pragmática Sanción of 1776 as they were not the girl's parents or legal guardians. He then went on to respond to the charges made by the girl's male relatives. The charge that Maria Trinidad was too young was false, as her birth certificate showed that she was 1 3 years and 5 months old. Furthermore, she knew all the principal prayers as required. As to the charge that she was forced or deceived into the marriage , that too was false since after two months away from her home she still wanted to marry him. Having addressed the overt questions, Urbano turned his attention to the racial subtext. To quote him directly: To all this said brothers and uncles of Maria Trinidad add the feigned dishonor [desdoro] that would follow, because being soldiers it would not look right for their niece and sister to marry an Indian. It is very...

Elinor G. K. Melville (1940–2006)

Elinor G. K. Melville (1940–2006)

Worries of the heart: widows, family, and community in Kenya

Growing up in the Maragoli community in Kenya, Kenda Mutongi encountered a perplexing contradiction. While the young teachers at her village school railed against colonialism, many of her elders, including her widowed mother, praised their former British masters. In this moving book, Mutongi explores how the challenges and frustrations of both colonial rule and independence shaped the lives of Maragoli widows and their complex relations with each other, their families, and the larger community. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, rates of widowhood have been remarkably high in Kenya. Yet despite their numbers, widows and their families exist at the margins of society, and their lives act as a barometer for the harsh realities of rural Kenyan life. Mutongi here argues that widows survive by publicly airing their social, economic, and political problems - their worries of the heart - and she concludes that this strategy has led to the development of a new language of citizenship and a demand for greater political recognition that would have been unthinkable under colonial rule. An innovative blend of ethnography and historical research, Worries of the Heart is a poignant narrative rich with insights into postcolonial Africa.